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Vevo, the online music video service launched by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment in late 2009, pulled in $150 million in revenue last year, chief executive Rio Caraeff revealed on Tuesday.

The service gets most of its viewers through YouTube, where Vevo is one of the most popular channels. Because of its high-quality music videos, Vevo commands advertising rates on par with broadcast television programming, he said. Vevo's popularity has boomed, going from 350 million global views per month two years ago to 3.5 billion a month today.

Along with disclosing revenue, Caraeff said Vevo has paid out $100 million to the music industry for the licensing fees on the videos over the last two years. He also told the "D: Dive Into Media" conference that the company is profitable.

Caraeff said the future of the industry is not necessarily just tied to sales of songs or concert tickets.

"The future of music is about allowing billions of people on the planet to access music experiences, not trying to sell music to a small amount of people who want to buy it," he said.

Vevo carries music videos from three of the largest recording companies in the world: Vivendi SA's Universal, Sony, and EMI, which does not have an equity stake.

Warner Music Group Corp. is not part of the coalition. Outgoing chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. told the conference earlier that Warner's strategy is to build up the artists' brands, not that of another company.

Caraeff said there is value in aggregating multiple record labels' artists in one place.

"I'm confident that we will have a relationship with Warner Music Group," Caraeff said. "Right now we respectfully have gone separate directions."

Sony Corp. announced Wednesday that Kazuo Hirai, who leads the company's core consumer products business, will replace Howard Stringer as CEO and president effective April 1, as the electronics and entertainment company desperately tries to engineer a turnaround.

The 51-year-old Hirai, currently executive deputy president, was widely expected to succeed Stringer. The Welsh-born Stringer, one of the few foreigners to lead a major Japanese company, will retain his post as chairman of the board, Sony said in a statement.

In 2009, Hirai, who has also led the company's gaming business in the past, was named as part of a new management team to lead Sony, and Stringer had recommended to the board that Hirai replace him. Hirai, who is fluent in English, will be Sony's youngest CEO.

Sony has been fighting to regain its image as a global leader in gadgets as consumers have increasingly turned to rival offerings such as the iPod and iPhone from Apple Inc., making the Walkman brand a has-been. It has also fallen behind in liquid-crystal displays for TVs to South Korean manufacturer Samsung Electronics Co.

"Kaz is a globally focused executive," Stringer said in a statement. "I believe his tough-mindedness and leadership skills will be of great benefit to the company and its customers in the months and years ahead. I look forward to helping Kaz in every way I can so that succession leads inevitably to success."

The management shuffle came a day before the company was to announce fiscal third-quarter earnings.

Battered by a strong yen and poor sales in its flat-panel TV business, Sony has forecast its fourth straight year of net losses for the fiscal year through March. The company has gone through massive cost cuts and restructuring and is hoping to recover in flat-panel TV, gaming and personal computer businesses.

"The path we must take is...

Call it the "second-screen" Super Bowl. About two-thirds of smartphone and tablet owners use their gadgets to do things like text or post on Twitter while watching TV, according to research firm Nielsen. So, for Sunday's game, companies from Coke to Chevy are trying to reach fans on all the "second screens" they have.

Chevrolet rolled out the first Super Bowl smartphone app that allows Big Game watchers to enter a contest to win everything from pizza to a new Camaro. Kia is the first company to show its Super Bowl ad ahead of the game in movie theaters. And Coca Cola set up a Facebook page and Web site so viewers can see its animated polar bears -- one cheering for the New England Patriots and the other for the New York Giants -- reacting to the game in real time.

"The world is changing," says Pio Schunker, Coca Cola's vice president for creative excellence. "We needed to come to the party with something new and different."

Advertisers have big incentives to stand out. With more than 111 million viewers expected to tune into the game, the Super Bowl is by far the biggest stage for marketers. It's also not cheap -- NBC is charging an average of $3.5 million for a 30-second spot. And the competition is fierce: there will be more than 70 TV ads during the Super Bowl battling for attention.

To create buzz, it's no longer enough for marketers to simply get people talking at the water cooler the morning after the game. They also want to engage the people who like reacting to big events like the Super Bowl by posting on Twitter or Facebook or texting their friends, says David Berkowitz, vice president at digital marketing agency 360i.

"People are glued to their digital devices, sometimes sharing far...

Samsung is flooding the mobile market with a galaxy of Galaxy products. From the original Galaxy S phones launched in March 2010 to the Galaxy Tab tablets, Galaxy S II phones and the new Galaxy Note, the South Korean manufacturer is making the most of its grandiose brand name, which has been well received by critics and consumers.

Now the company is gearing up for the third generation of its powerful, large-touchscreen handsets, with the Galaxy S3, and its launch may well coincide with the expected launch of archrival Apple's eagerly awaited iPhone 5 this summer.

Samsung raised some eyebrows by announcing Wednesday that it will not showcase the Galaxy S3 at the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, later this month.

Galaxy Far, Far Away?

"Samsung is looking forward to introducing and demonstrating exciting new mobile products at Mobile World Congress 2012," the company said in a statement first reported by the Web site TechRadar. "The successor to the Galaxy S2 smartphone will be unveiled at a separate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the product."

The U.S. versions of the Galaxy phones, with a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen, 1-GHz processor and 5-megapixel camera were first announced in June 2010 as T-Mobile's Vibrant, AT&T's Captivate, Sprint's Epic, and Verizon Wireless's Fascinate. U.S. Cellular later added a variant called the Mesmerize, and MetroPCS added the Galaxy Indulge.

The Galaxy S II was unveiled almost a year ago at the Mobile World Congress with upgraded features such as a 1.2 GHz, dual-core processor, 1 gigabyte of RAM, a 4.3-inch WVGA Super AMOLED Plus screen display and 8-megapixel camera with flash and 1080p high-definition recording.

The Galaxy Nexus, the first to run Google's Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) operating system and with a 4.65-inch screen and near-field communication technology for...

A mobile customer service desk for small- to medium-size businesses. That's the idea behind Desk.com, a new cloud-based customer service product from Salesforce.com.

Announced Tuesday, Desk.com allows any business to interact with customers on any major social network, via a mobile device. The company said in a statement that the service is "so simple that any company, even one without an IT staff, can get up and running over a weekend."

'First-Class Citizens'

With nearly a quarter of all time spent online being spent on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Salesforce.com has become a leader in integrating social networks into its customer service offerings.

The company envisions a scenario such as a customer posting a critical comment on Facebook about its newly purchased widget. While a desktop-based customer service worker for the widget maker might be the first stop for responding to the comment, the actual resolution might be better handled by a technical service person, who could be out in the field.

With Desk.com, that ticket can then be picked up by the technical service employee, and resolved via a mobile device. The ticket can be reassigned, have its status or priority changed, or have its customer information modified.

Salesforce said that, according to its data, nearly three-quarters of small businesses use mobile applications in their daily operations. With Desk.com, SMBs can use a help desk that integrates social networks, e-mail, phone and other Web components, making social networks into what the company described as "first-class citizens along with traditional support channels."

Hourly for 'Casual' Reps

Desk.com runs on any smartphone that supports HTML 5, such as Android-based devices and Apple's iPhone. Reporting includes information on how many cases customer service agents have opened, resolved, replied to, reassigned, or reopened, and a dozen pre-built reports offer such data as handling time, time to first...

In the latest battle in their worldwide legal war, Apple has failed to obtain a temporary ban in Germany on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1N tablet and its Galaxy Nexus smartphone. The decision by the Munich Regional Court comes one day after an appeals court in Dusseldorf ruled in favor of Apple's request to ban the previous Samsung tablet model, the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

The 10.1N was released by Samsung with a few modifications to the 10.1 version, specifically to avoid a preliminary ban that had been granted for the earlier model based on patent infringements. A lower Dusseldorf court will soon hear another case filed by Apple about the 10.1N. If sales of the 10.1N are allowed to proceed, the Dusseldorf court ruling on the 10.1 may no longer be relevant.

Modifications on 10.1, Galaxy Smartphone

The ban on the 10.1 model became effective in August. The 10.1N model, which adds a metal frame around the edge of the tablet to change its appearance enough to avoid the patent issue, went on sale in late November, and the decision Wednesday resulted from Apple's attempt to get the revised model banned as well.

For the Dutch market, Samsung had made a change to software on its Galaxy smartphones, which related to how users flip through a photo gallery. The change was made to get around an injunction obtained in that country by Apple, also based on patent infringements.

Florian Mueller, a Munich-based patent expert, wrote in his Foss Patents blog Wednesday that preliminary injunctions based on patents, which both Samsung and Apple have tried to obtain on the other, have frequently failed because they ask courts to make quick judgments about patents, which can be complex.

Target: Android

Meanwhile, the European Commission said Tuesday that it will look into whether Samsung had broken a commitment...

A major TV component manufacturer revealed that Apple contacted it about providing TV display components, Piper Jaffray analysts said in a note to investors Tuesday.

"We continue to believe Apple is preparing to launch a television and is likely targeting a late calendar year 2012 launch," said analysts Gene Munster and Andrew Murphy. "But the timeline and scope of a revamped content solution is more uncertain."

The comments are the latest indication that Apple intends to fulfill the late CEO Steve Jobs' vision of delivering a simple but elegant user interface for revolutionizing the mainstream TV market.

App Developers Key

Munster and Murphy believe that Apple's strong iOS developer community would likely jump at the chance to build apps for an Apple Television, and that millions of users of Apple products based on the iOS platform would be intrigued by an Apple TV offering. However, the launch of an entirely new platform is not without considerable risks.

"If you lead a developer ecosystem then you have to keep feeding them and you also have a responsibility to take them to the Promised Land or at least ever higher patches," said Al Hilwa, director of applications development software at IDC.

On the other hand, Apple may believe it is even more risky to cede the television market to rivals. "If Apple does not crack the TV or living room entertainment nut, then Microsoft, Google, Amazon or maybe even Facebook may get there before them," Hilwa said.

Apple TV Options

Apple could simply enable the Apple Television platform to manage a consumer's live TV service from within a unified interface much like TiVo does today. To avoid the high cost of market entry, however, Apple would need to rely on Multiple Services Operator partnerships.

"While this would be the easiest and most likely option, it would also be the...

Cisco is pushing its cloud-ready switching portfolio to market. Cisco has updated its switch lineup with 100- and 40-gigabit Ethernet capabilities.

Cisco clearly sees opportunity. According to the Cisco Cloud Index, more than 50 percent of computing workloads in data centers will be cloud-based by 2014, and global cloud traffic will grow more than 12 times by 2015, to 1.6 zettabytes per year. That's the equivalent of more than four days of business-class video for every person on earth.

"This is a good announcement for Cisco," said Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research. "Look at the popularity of 10 gig now for server interconnects. You typically want to keep your inner switch links at a higher speed than what you are running your servers at because you don't want the network to be a bottleneck. Cisco is not first to market with 100 gigs -- Brocade was -- but Cisco is not late to market, either."

Demand for 100 GB?

Cisco said its new capabilities provide a "holistic architectural approach" across campus, data center and service provider environments, and address emerging trends like cloud, video, mobility and the proliferation of 10 Gb Ethernet.

The announcement is in line with cloud market moves Cisco has been making lately, including the recently rolled out CloudVerse solution. Cisco said the new switches are a key element of its strategy to help customers meet the demands of cloud computing trends and the "resulting data deluge."

"I think you'll start seeing the demand for these switches," Kerravala said. "We'll probably see more demand for the 40 gig than the 100 gig. But it's good that Cisco has a 100 gig option because companies that need the speed prefer that exponential jump from 10 gigs. In a lot of people's minds, mine included, 100 is the next logical step...

IBM just got into the mobile management game. Big Blue rolled out software based on its 2010 BigFix acquisition that helps organizations manage and secure smartphones and tablets in the workplace while also managing laptops, desktops and servers.

Dubbed IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices, the new offering lets companies use a single solution to manages Apple iOS, Google Android, Nokia Symbian, and Microsoft Windows Mobile and Windows Phone devices. The software also adds a layer of security to combat the escalating threats from the bring your own device, or BYOD, trend.

"If you plant yourself in the data center and think about all the data and applications around you, somehow it has to all get pushed out so that people can use it on PCs, laptops, servers or elsewhere," said Bob Sutor, vice president of IBM Mobile Platform. "Many of the things you have to do in terms of provisioning applications, updating operating systems, and knowing what version is running, is very consistent with what's going on with mobile."

A Mobile Uprising

It's consistent -- and it's happening on a grand scale. IDC expects the mobile workforce to reach more than 1.19 billion by 2013, putting new pressures on enterprises to connect personal smartphones and tablets to corporate networks and provide employee access to business data on them.

At the end of 2011, almost half of mobile devices used in the workplace were employee owned, according to IDC. This BYOD trend raises additional concerns about managing security risks. Mobile exploits doubled in 2011 from 2010, according to the IBM X-Force Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report.

"Let's say that you discover that there is an incredible security flaw in some app. How can I push out an update to 100,000 employees?" Sutor asked. "What happens if you lose your phone? Remotely you need to either...

Samsung took a hit in its battle against arch-rival Apple on Tuesday, when the European Union announced it will investigate whether it is illegally trying to hinder competitors and Germany blocked sales of some of its tablets.

Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. are engaged in a strategic war over patents in many countries across the world as they try to draw market share away from each other.

The EU's antitrust watchdog thinks the South Korean company may be overstepping the bounds, however, and launched a formal investigation of whether Samsung is using law suits over key patents on 3G wireless technology to hinder competitors -- including Apple.

In Germany, an appeals court ruled in favor of Apple in a separate case, saying Samsung could not sell its Galaxy Tab 10.1 nor the Galaxy Tab 8.9 in the country because they too closely resembled the iPad2, in violation of unfair competition laws.

"Samsung wrongly used the enormous reputation and prestige of the iPad," Duesseldorf state court Presiding Judge Wilhelm Berneke wrote in his ruling.

Samsung's successor tablet, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 N, was not affected by the ruling, and the company said that while the decision was disappointing, it was largely irrelevant.

"Today's ruling is of little factual relevance due to the new model Galaxy Tab 10.1 N, and ... the decision therefore is of no indicative value with respect to other legal proceedings involving the Galaxy Tab 10.1 N," Samsung said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

"Samsung will continue to take all appropriate measures, including legal action, to ensure continued consumer access to our innovative products."

Florian Mueller, a patent analyst who has been closely following the battle between Samsung and Apple, said the German court ruling won't have a commercial impact on the South Korean company, since it has already been selling a new model...